Luther is breaking away from the Catholic Church due to the several injustices and problems surrounding the church and their values. He was motivated to call for change upon questioning the purpose of indulgences within the Catholic Church. Luther lived by Roman 1:17, which states “he who is righteous shall live by faith”, which when applied to one’s life means that one can only be saved through the grace of God. Actions don’t get you closer to God, rather, God blessed us allowing us to be saved, through him only. In that manner, indulgences were utilized in the Catholic Church to reduce the amount of punishments one has to endure for the comitance of their sins. However, in application of Roman 1:17, indulgences don’t make any logical sense. If our actions don’t do anything to get us closer to God, why would indulgences be any different? This prompted him to write the 95 Theses in October of 1517, which displayed his dissatisfaction with the Church’s sale of indulgences, eventually leading to the birth of protestantism. However, it is important to note that Luther was not trying to start a new religion, at least not initially. Instead, he wanted to work with the Catholic Church to help fix its problems and align itself more accurately with the teachings of the bible. However, when the Catholic Church was unwilling to change their ways, Luther was willing to separate his beliefs in order for preservation of their teaching. Although Luther and his theses allowed for the creation of different Christian denominations, this was not his intention. In addition, these are not different religions, they’re merely different denominations - yet I’m sure many people viewed it as different religions back in that time, as the people were so used to Catholicism, that anything not completely catholicism was different and strange from the normative.
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